The main thing I got from the MIT article is this:<p>"This system relies on an array of antennas that emit radio waves of slightly different frequencies. As the radio waves travel, they overlap and combine in different ways."<p>This is known as constructive interference, pretty nifty to see it used in this context. The range has been increased from 10 cm to 1 meter since the paper I co-authored on this subject. Impressive!<p>These kinds of applications have also been a long time coming. With IoT devices and NFC readers looming around the corner, I think it is likely that we will see some pretty innovative medical inventions. Likewise, as mentioned by NKosmatos, we need to take the security aspect very seriously. Some of these NFC devices are programmable, and should defend against attacks that could lead to events such as withholding life-saving medicine or misreporting biometrics.<p>For reference, check out this paper I co-authored:<p>Suitability of NFC for Medical Device Communication and Power Delivery (2007)<p><a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4454171/" rel="nofollow">https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4454171/</a><p>And if you're interested in an early paper about RFID-delivered viruses, check out this by Tanenbaum et al.:<p><a href="http://www.rfidvirus.org/papers/percom.06.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.rfidvirus.org/papers/percom.06.pdf</a>